How to organize heat shrink tubing?

[Michael]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing, of all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors. Right now
it's all thrown in a cabinet and is a complete mess.

Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

Thanks!

-Michael

 

[John Larkin]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing, of all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors. Right now
it's all thrown in a cabinet and is a complete mess.

Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

Thanks!

-Michael

Put it in the oven for a while. That will make it smaller and much
easier to store.

John

 

[Jim Thompson]

Put it in the oven for a while. That will make it smaller and much
easier to store.

John

Sno-o-o-o-ort! Fortunately I had completely swallowed my coffee
before I read that... otherwise I'd be changing keyboards AGAIN ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Rich Grise]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing, of all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors. Right now
it's all thrown in a cabinet and is a complete mess.

Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

You might have to make a decision: do you want them sorted by size, or
by color? Then, once you've decided, then you can go to either colors
within a size group or sizes within a color group. I've even seen bins
of heat-shrink where each color was a different size. (Or each size was
a different color, I'm not sure how they catalogued them.)

As far as storage, get a box with multiple chambers, like an egg-
crate separator or so, and just stack them up. Or you could save a bunch
of paper towel tubes and tape them together to hold your bundles of
tubing.

Good Luck!
Rich

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing, of all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors. Right now
it's all thrown in a cabinet and is a complete mess.

Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

Thanks!

-Michael

Mailing tubes, cut to various lengths. I prefer six inch intervals.
Anything between tube lengths goes in the next shorter length. Look in
the short tubes first, and work your way up so you don't have dozens of
short pieces of the same type and color. Its worked ell for me, for
over a decade.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[whit3rd]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing,
Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

Well, the big supply goes in the closet and you shut the door.
A small supply lives next to the soldering station, tucked into
a tasteful tall vase (well, actually mine is in a lab-surplus
graduated
cylinder...). A second small supply lives in a ziploc bag in the tool
box.

When a vase-resident stem gets too short, that piece is retired
to the ziploc bag.

 

[Ink Maker]

Well, the big supply goes in the closet and you shut the door.
A small supply lives next to the soldering station, tucked into
a tasteful tall vase (well, actually mine is in a lab-surplus
graduated
cylinder...). A second small supply lives in a ziploc bag in the tool
box.

When a vase-resident stem gets too short, that piece is retired
to the ziploc bag.

Keep only what you need and sell the rest in eBay.

Ken
Torrey Hills Technologies, LLC.
www.threerollmill.com
www.torreyhillstech.com

 

[PeterD]

You might have to make a decision: do you want them sorted by size, or
by color? Then, once you've decided, then you can go to either colors
within a size group or sizes within a color group. I've even seen bins
of heat-shrink where each color was a different size. (Or each size was
a different color, I'm not sure how they catalogued them.)

As far as storage, get a box with multiple chambers, like an egg-
crate separator or so, and just stack them up. Or you could save a bunch
of paper towel tubes and tape them together to hold your bundles of
tubing.

Good Luck!
Rich

Sort by size...

No, wait:

Sort by size first, then color...

No, wait:

Sort by type first, then size, then color...

No, wait:

Sort by color, then size, then type.

No, wait:

throw them all in a cabinet and jsut grab what you need when you need
it. Works for me.

 

[Rich Grise]

Sort by size...

No, wait:

Sort by size first, then color...

No, wait:

Sort by type first, then size, then color...

No, wait:

Sort by color, then size, then type.

No, wait:

throw them all in a cabinet and jsut grab what you need when you need
it. Works for me.

Admittedly, the last time I saw heatshrink organized _at all_ was at the
local electronics store.

Cheers!
Rich
[I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek with my answer, but I guess my humour
isn't as funny to other people as it is to me. )-; ]

 

[Adrian Tuddenham]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing, of all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors. Right now
it's all thrown in a cabinet and is a complete mess.

Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

A row of nails along a shelf edge, or other convenient woodwork, with
bundles of the tubing suspended from them by loops of elastic bands.
Easy to reach out and grab what you want.

 

[Leon]

Put it in the oven for a while. That will make it smaller and much
easier to store.

Save even more space by putting the smaller tubing inside the larger
tubing.

Leon

 

[Guy Macon]

Mailing tubes, cut to various lengths. I prefer six inch intervals.
Anything between tube lengths goes in the next shorter length. Look in
the short tubes first, and work your way up so you don't have dozens of
short pieces of the same type and color. Its worked ell for me, for
over a decade.

Exactly the system I use! I used PVC pipe with PVC endcaps.

Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

I don't think I ever mentioned this before, but I should have.
I for one really appreciate what you have done for our country.
Thank you.

 

[Winfield]

I don't think I ever mentioned this before, but I should have.
I for one really appreciate what you have done for our country.
Thank you.

Me too. Hear Hear.

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

Hi there - we have piles and piles of ~1 meter long chunks of heat
shrink tubing, of all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors. Right now
it's all thrown in a cabinet and is a complete mess.

Any suggestions for organizing this stuff?

Thanks!

-Michael

There are not only different colors of shrink tubing, there are
different types as well.

There are types that have heat activated adhesives inside, and there
are dual layer High Voltage types... the list goes on.

If you are sure that they are all of the same type, you need not
pre-classify them by type. Size is all you need. Even with the
different colors for a given size in the same "bin", you will find that
choosing the right piece needed based on size is easy, and choosing the
right color is a decision you make before you even approach the lot.

If they are, however, of different types as well, the problem
magnifies, because without them having been marked as to type, it will
not be easy for someone not using them constantly to tell one type from
another, unless you are a person that pays attention to such details all
the time.

 

[Michael]

Put it in the oven for a while. That will make it smaller and much
easier to store.

John

Hi John - though a valid suggestion - After the ovening, I would still
be left with the problem of having lots of long tubing to organize -
so I think the problem at topic would still persist.

-Michael

 

[Don Lancaster]

Hi John - though a valid suggestion - After the ovening, I would still
be left with the problem of having lots of long tubing to organize -
so I think the problem at topic would still persist.

-Michael

Heat the tubing first.
The storage room needed will be a lot less.


--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: [email protected]

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[John Larkin]

Heat the tubing first.
The storage room needed will be a lot less.

Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?

John

 

[Rich Grise]

On Aug 10, 11:50 am, John Larkin

Hi John - though a valid suggestion - After the ovening, I would still
be left with the problem of having lots of long tubing to organize -
so I think the problem at topic would still persist.

If you really did this, the heat-shrink would already be shrunk, and so
it wouldn't be any use as heat-shrink again. Albeit, hot heatshrink
is pretty limp and plastic, so could conceivably be used in lieu of
spaghetti tubing, but I believe that John has merely been having a bit
of fun with us here.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

If you really did this, the heat-shrink would already be shrunk, and so
it wouldn't be any use as heat-shrink again. Albeit, hot heatshrink
is pretty limp and plastic, so could conceivably be used in lieu of
spaghetti tubing, but I believe that John has merely been having a bit
of fun with us here.

Cheers!
Rich

I think it was a serious suggestion. There was nothing in the
requirements about having to use it for anything.. just storage.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Rich Grise]

Me too. Hear Hear.

Come on! Michael and I can't be the _only_ vets who frequent this
NG, can we?

(I have a 214 on record somewhere, and two, count'em, two Honorable
Discharges - I got out in '72, but then re-upped for the bennies. ;-) )

Thanks,
Rich